Shots in the Dark

The Yanks won a beauty last night, 8-7 against the Rangers, topping off a three-game sweep of a solid Texas team. Jason Giambi won it with his 29th homer in the top of the 9th, snapping out of, we hope, a 4-32 slump.

But you’d barely know that from reading the New York Times.

For the third straight day, at least 50% of the front page of the Times sports section has been covered by photos and coverage of the Mets. The Yankee game gets about three inches of column space in the left-hand margin; the previous two days, the Yanks were relegated to the inner depths of the section—even though the Mets lost both those games. The Mets managed to take one of three from the Cubbies, who have a record of 39-61. And yet, huge above-the-fold photos….

This is getting ridiculous.

Let’s exercise some editorial judgement here, shall we?

The Yankees are in a terrific pennant race against century-old rivals, the Red Sox. Right now they’re a game and a half back, but with their injuries and pitching problems, you’d have to consider them the underdogs. Still, they’re fighting. They’re also in a tight race for the wild card against the surging Minnesota Twins and the “world champion” Chicago White Sox. And the reinvigorated Toronto Blue Jays.

Pretty exciting stuff, huh?

But again and again in the Times, it’s the Mets on Page One.

Do they deserve it? Sure, they’re in first place in the NL East by 11.5 games. But remember—they’re playing in the weaker National League. If they were playing in the AL East, they’d be a game ahead of the Yanks, half a game behind the Sox. (That’s assuming they could maintain that record playing in the AL, which I doubt—they’re at .500 against the Yankees, and they got swept by the Red Sox.) If they were playing in the AL Central, where Detroit has won 68 games, they’d be nine games out of first.

How much competition do the Mets face? (I.e., how good are they, really?) Well, the second place team in their division, the Braves, has a record of 48-52. The second-place team is four games under .500. If the Braves were in the AL East, they’d be next to last, just beating out the worst team in baseball, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.

So, please, Times—can we have a little sports reality check?

“There’s Scales Everywhere”

If you’re afraid of sharks, don’t watch this video.

Need proof that Washington is a sexist city? Then check out Roll Call newspaper’s list of the 50 Most Beautiful People in Washington.

(And no, that’s not an oxymoron. Washington has its share of hotties. They just happen to come from somewhere else.)

Take, for example, #47, Staci Meirs, a lobbyist (they call it “congressional liason”) for the National Education Association.

Pretty attractive, right?

Compare that to New York congressman John McHugh, who comes in at #32.

What’s wrong with this picture?

Let’s try again. Here’s #29, Majida Mourad, formerly a congressional aide, now…a lobbyist. (They call her a vice-president at the Abraham Group.)

Works for me.

But wait…five notches above her, at #24, there’s House Majority Leader John Boehner, Republican of Ohio:

Huh.

There are lots of things to like about Washington, but sometimes….

After long probe, Palm Beach billionaire faces solicitation charge
—Palm Beach Post - FL, United States

(Sorry, but that was just too easy.)

What a week for pop culture!

Last night, the Dixie Chicks appeared on PBS, thus confirming that they’ve made a complete career switch from Red State country-babes to Blue State crossover paragons of feminine beauty. So does their new, all-in-black look….

Dixie Chicks: From right to left….

Yesterday reclusive genius Green Gartside, better known as Scritti Politti, released his fourth album in the last twenty years, White Bread Black Beer, and it is typically crafted, perfectionist, beautiful music. To some derision—this is the sweetest pop music you’ll ever hear, and it would probably make Ross Douthat deeply uncomfortable—I’ve been a fan since the late ’80s. Others are finally coming around. The New York Times loves the new record, calling it “remarkably beautiful,” “subtle and exacting,” marked by “the precision of the phrasing and the sweetness of the melody.”

Well…yes.

Green Gartside. Quite weird.

And on Friday comes the release of Michael Mann’s Miami Vice, the movie version of his famed ’80s TV show, which my college roommates and I used to watch on Friday nights before going out and getting silly drunk. (It put one in the mood.) Mann is another genius—as perfectionist and exacting as Gartside is, though slightly more prolific. His films include Collateral, Heat, The Insider, Last of the Mohicans, the much-underrated Manhunter, Ali, and Thief. They’re typified by stunning visuals, gritty screenwriting, and the ability to obtain great performances from his actors, like Val Kilmer’s in Heat, Will Smith’s in Ali, and Tom Cruise (!) in Collateral. He also writes the best parts for women in modern film.

Miami Vice has been surrounded by bad buzz, mostly because the filming of it was an incredible saga. Colin Farrell got addicted to drugs and separated a rib from his sternum, not necessarily in that order; shooting (of the film) was interrupted by shooting (of bullets); Jamie Foxx refused to film in Brasil; Mann banned the color red from appearing in the film; and so on.

I can’t wait….

Michael Mann:
Cinematic god.

The biopsy came back thumbs-up yesterday. But before anyone worries, this isn’t a melanoma, the very serious form of skin cancer; it’s just a basal cell carcinoma, which sits there on your skin and gradually gets bigger but isn’t life-threatening.

I’ve come to quite like my funky dermatologists’ office. The downtown loft quality of it, the wireless Internet access in the waiting room—I hope whoever was cruising Manhunt.net (“Hook up now!”) found what he was looking for—the flat-screen TV on one wall, the Bebel Gilberto playing in the background…it’s all oddly soothing.

Doctor John Adams started me on a treatment protocol in which the cancer is coated with an ointment called Levulan and then exposed to blue light, once a week for a month, which is supposed to kill the cancer cells. A nurse took me into a back room and laid me down on a table, putting goggles over my eyes—the light, apparently, is pretty bright. Seven minutes of crackling and fizzing later, and treatment one was done.

If all goes well, in a month I can proudly wear my “Live Strong” bracelet….

Lloyd Grove reports in yesterday’s Daily News that in September, Viking will publish a new memoir about John F. Kennedy, Jr. Called Forever Young: Growing Up With John F. Kennedy Jr.,” it’s written by William Sylvester Noonan, who was a friend of John’s.

According to Grove, The 256-page book, “featuring never-before-seen personal snapshots of JFK Jr.,” is “packed with never-revealed details of John and Carolyn Bessette’s courtship and wedding, the launch of George [magazine], John’s unusually close relationship with his mother, Jackie, and the heartbreaking aftermath of the plane crash off Martha’s Vineyard that killed John, Carolyn and Carolyn’s sister [Lauren Bessette],” promises Viking’s fall catalogue.

Noonan also shares the more ribald episodes, including John’s many famous conquests….

Ugh.

I know; I wrote a book about John, and so I shouldn’t fault anyone else for doing the same, especially without having read it. So I promise to keep an open mind.

At the same time, this subject matter makes me wince. To the extent that I knew about it, I steered clear of such tales in American Son. Seems to me that, since John didn’t live long enough to balance the trivial (his dating life) with the substantial (say, a career in politics), there’s no balance to this kind of memoir. There’s no greatness tempered with human foibles, just diminution.

I also steered clear of delving deeply into John and Carolyn’s relationship, as that was one area, I thought, John wouldn’t have wanted people to write about. Public about so much else, he was private—and protective—when it came to his marriage. (Interestingly, people who know I wrote a book about John ask me about Carolyn at least as often as they do about John, particularly women. Carolyn remains an object of some fascination.)

I know: It’s funny for someone who was criticized for “exposing his boss’ secrets” to have such compunctions. But I do. Even though, at this point, no one is the slightest bit up in arms about this new book, as they were about mine.

Well, it is dangerous to judge a book by its catalogue copy. Who knows? Maybe it’s a warm and fond story. I hope so.
__________________________________________________________________

P.S. Have you ever noticed how male friendship makes conservatives squirm? In a recent article in Slate, young Harvard conservative Ross Douthat alleges that I had a “man-crush” on John. Whatever. Perhaps Douthat is projecting. As he recounts in his own memoir, one of the sensual highlights of his young life was skinnydipping with William F. Buckley….

Here’s a story you’re going to hear a lot more about before too long: In Massachusetts, home foreclosures are up 66% from last year, thanks to the combination of rising interest rates and adjustable interest rate mortgages.

I have a feeling this is going to be a huge problem…the real collapse of the real estate bubble.

A poster below had this to say about my earlier blog regarding the small patch of skin cancer on my right arm:

As a survivor of a life-threatening, invasive cancer, I was actually unhappy with your breezy “I may have cancer” narrative-tends to trivialize a serious problem. Sorry, what you have is a common condition that has no invasive component, no tendency to metastasize, and no life-threatening implications.

To which I say…well, wouldn’t it have been more offensive if I wrote about a non-life-threatening cancer with the utmost gravity? Or if I wrote about a life-threatening cancer with the utmost levity?

For what it’s worth, the central commentary of that post was really about the absurdity of the doctor’s office I went to. The cancer part was, if you will, a subplot.

And, yes, I do find it good for a few laughs.

Yesterday I happened to see a cousin of mine, a mother of four, who, about a month ago, had a golf-ball sized tumor removed from her brain. “You think you’ve got problems,” I told her, showing her my band-aid. “I’ve got cancer.”

My cousin, who understood full well what I was up to, had a good laugh.

Later, she couldn’t remember the exact color of the house I grew up in. “You have to forgive me,” she said. “I had a brain tumor.”

She added that she thought she could use that excuse for about a year. I told her that, the next time I forgot something, I was going to use it: “You have to forgive me—my cousin had a brain tumor.”

Okay, maybe we’re a little twisted. But people respond to disease, whatever its degree of seriousness, differently. And humor, of course, is a defense mechanism. My maternal grandmother died of cancer; my mother had cancer; my stepfather had cancer; my father has skin cancer. My paternal grandfather, whom I never knew, had Parkinson’s, from which he died. Basically, he starved to death. My dad also has Parkinson’s. When I see him these days, I help cut his food. (Just keep passing the open windows, as Kurt Vonnegut once wrote.) It’s beginning to look like Parkinson’s has a genetic connection. So if typoos start to appear on this blog, buy me a drink, and don’t forget the straw.

About certain things, you see, I have a dark sense of humor. Cancer and Dick Cheney, primarily.

On a more serious note, congratulations to the poster for surviving his or her experience with cancer, which clearly was vastly more serious than mine is. Whenever someone beats cancer, it’s cause for celebration.

Sunset off Floreana Island, Galapagos